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Tips & Tricks
The Secret to Blogging & Presentation Success
I’ve been blogging for over three years and have been sharing presentations on a variety of social media topics for the past year. My most recent presentation was about social media and job searching. It went extremely well and the audience was really pleased. So much so that they are pursuing further customized training. A [...]
Establishing a Social Media Program
Whether your organization has 50 or 5000 employees, a social media program is critical to your organization’s success in the social space. As organizational use of social media evolves and becomes more prevalent, establishing a program to carry the organization forward in this space is critical. There are four areas to focus on when formalizing social [...]
Generate More Blog Traffic
Yesterday I wrote a post highlighting the Future of Marketing virtual conference that happened that day. I didn’t expect the traffic that followed. Within 24 hours, that post was seen 50 times, which is the most viewed post in the last two weeks. This got me asking myself, what made the difference? Why did people [...]
How I Got 1000 Followers on Twitter
For many people, 1000 followers on Twitter is not a huge achievement, but for me it is. The number of followers you have on Twitter doesn’t indicate success or failure, but its how engaged your followers are. The more followers you have, the more likely you are to have engagement. Here are some strategies that [...]
8 Best Practices for Social Media Success
The list below of best practices are not a secret or only available to exclusive group of people, but it may seem that way because so many people still don’t follow these simple tactics. Despite the cartoon below, by following these best practices, you will not be mediocre. In fact you will shine above others. [...]
Get the Facebook Username You Want
How many of you have gone to register a username for your Facebook page only to find out its unavailable. You try to visit the Facebook page that so rudely ‘stole’ your username, but you find out that the page could not be found. What? The username is taken, but the page no longer exists? [...]
SEO Copywriting – 5 Tips for Better Search Visibility
The following is a guest blog post from Corry Cummings. Corry is the owner of Content Customs, a content creation company that specializes in high quality web content writing services. He also runs a blog over at Content Customs, which is managed and written by one of the head writers of the company. Many veteran web developers remember [...]
To Retweet or Not
One of the advantages of Twitter is the ability spread information at very rapid pace. I actually like to retweet (RT) other’s tweets if I find the information interesting. As with everything we do online, our tweets should have strategy. Why are we spending time sending a tweet or retweeting someone else’s tweet? The bottom [...]
Social Media… Keep It Fresh!
In 2008, I wrote a post entitled, ‘Blogs Aren’t Wine & Cheese.’ In the post I suggest that blogs are best served fresh and become less effective the more stale they are, whereas some of the best cheese and wine are very old. I would like to extend that thought to more than blogs. We [...]
Focused Design
Many higher education institutions have multiple target audiences and multiple goals they want to accomplish. This is usually represented by the institutional website. You may see messaging for alumni, parents, donors, government, faculty, prospective students, current students, partners, etc. With each of these audiences, there are usually tasks the institution would like to see these [...]
Weekly Video: “The Serendipity Engine” from Chris Brogan
This week’s video is a little on the long side (10 min), but well worth the view. If any of you have read or listened to Chris Brogan, you’ll understand why it’s worth the view. Chris calls Twitter and other tools like it (eg. LinkedIn) a ‘serendipity engine’. Which makes total sense if you refer to [...]
Nice People Still Exist
This doesn’t really fit in any of my categories, but I felt a need to share this. I was Christmas shopping this evening at Toys R Us. We had our kids with us and actually have gotten fairly good at hiding presents from them. I use my coat to cover the presents in the cart. [...]
You Need to Unplug
It’s kind of ironic that I’m writing a blog post about unplugging from technology, but this has been on my mind lately, so I thought I would share it. This has been a year of transformation and growth for our web department and for myself. We are tapping into new technologies and methods that we [...]
The Importance of Metadata for PDF Files
PDF files have been around for a long time and Google has been indexing PDF files for almost as long. Unfortunately, some basic best practices still go over looked to ensure proper indexing of PDF files. Just do a Google Search for PDF files, and you will see a lot of search results with irrelevant [...]
I Just Don’t Get Twitter!
Well, actually I do. But this is what I hear from family, friends, and co-workers when I mention that I use Twitter. Twitter has gotten a rough ride by media and blog posts as being a waste of time or a joke.
Change Your WordPress URL
If you ever need to change the URL for your WordPress installation, this quick tip will help you. I just recently went through this process with another blog and while it was relatively painless, it could have been disastrous. Make sure you backup before beginning. Changing your WordPress URL from www.oldwebsite.com to www.newwebsite.com is very [...]
Weekly Video: Keyword Research Basics
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can be an overwhelming task, but it doesn’t have to be. Once you’ve identified the strategy for your website (eg. goals, audience, messages, etc.), you can then start by building your keyword list. We will be going through this exact exercise over the next few months as we work not only [...]
Multiple Signatures Using Google Gmail
If you have a Gmail account and use it for both personal and professional purposes, you may have needed signatures for each. Unfortunately, Gmail doesn’t have the ability to create multiple email signatures like Outlook or other clients do. In my searches, I came across a method that uses the Greasemonkey add-on for Firefox. I’ve [...]
Weekly Video: Google Website Optimizer Tutorial
I’ve been interested in conversions and landing pages for some time, but just from a theoretical approach. As the college where I works gets ready to launch a new marketing campaign, I’m planning on using Google Website Optimizer. My goals are simple: 1) determine which landing page is best and 2) get a better understanding [...]
Separate Personal & Work on Social Networks
I came across this post the other day – How To Lose Your Job Via Facebook Status. The post refers to a person who puts some very negative comments about her job and boss in her Facebook status. Unfortunately for her, she made her boss a friend on Facebook previously. Needless to say she lost [...]